Nokia gets its groove on with the 5800 XpressMusic
Nokia has launched the long-rumored touch phone, aka the Tube, and it is the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The 5800 is a touch-only phone with a focus on multimedia playing, no doubt to prevent inevitable iPhone comparisons. The handset maker also rolls out their Comes With Music service, a music store that coupled with multimedia phones by Nokia provide a one year access to all the music downloads you want for free. You get to keep everything you download too so this is a pioneering move on Nokia’s part.
The 5800 phone will not be compared to the iPhone as it’s a lot clunkier and boring for sure. It has a 640×360 screen that is nice and bright and all touch screen. It’s a resistive touch screen though, so it’s sure to not work as well as that on the iPhone. That’s likely the reason Nokia includes that shark’s fin stylus in the photo above as you’ll probably need to use it a lot. The screen provides haptic feedback when touched like many phones and it is all powered by the new version of the OS, S60 Fifth Edition.
The 5800 XpressMusic is not breaking much new ground, it’s rather like a high-end feature phone with touch. The real news here is the Comes With Music package bundle. Buy the 5800, get a one year subscription to the all you can eat music store. You get to keep all downloaded music even without renewing the subscription making it pretty innovative. Note that according to Nokia music can only be downloaded to the phone so you’ll be restricted by the amount of storage available on the phone for that year. You can only burn the music to CD for safekeeping by another paid subscription plan.
The Symbian browser has been updated to work better with touch and videos I’ve seen of it in action it looks pretty good. It won’t unseat Mobile Safari yet but it’s better than prior versions of the browser.
Note that currently Nokia is not saying when the 5800 will be available outside Europe. They have stated that it will be available in Western European markets in Q1 2009. They also plan a version of the music store for the US market but cannot say when that will happen. It is expected the 5800 and music store will not be available in the US until sometime next year.
My blog rant: http://tinyurl.com/4m2tjt – Comes With Music is the usual DRM-infested subscription rubbish. This is something the labels have tried to sell to the consumer for the last ten years and failed; it’s not clear why wishful thinking would make it sell now.
Ok, I will be slightly nice and not slight this article any, but this is no more a feature phone than the iPhone is. Don’t let the marketing of it as a music device mislead you. Its Symbian S60 version 5. The latest version of the mobile OS that is in the N95 (to which teh beloved iPhone still hasn’t matched in terms of sheer specs).
Besides that, its 1cm thick, that ain’t thick compared to the iPhone. Its nearly the same. It doesn’t have the flash memory, but has a microSDHC slot and comes with an 8GB card.
Haptics is better than none; these are localized, unlike the Samsung Instinct. The stylus is not because its a resistive screen (horrible reasoning), its because the UI was only slightly refined over the normal S60 UI, and therefore many elements are better for stylus entry. No, I don’t like that either, but it is what it is. Better than some other makes that would let you build a stylus with your fingernail because they didn’t incude anything.
And remember, a resistive touhcscreen doesn’t need the electrical currents of your finger, therefore it can be used with a glove on. Add haptics to that and it beomes a solid cold weather option
Speaking as one who uses Nokia’s Web Browser, its better than Safari Mobile in everything except the zooming action. From AJAX support to speed in rendering, its faster. Fonts also look better when in the zoomed out view. Usability of Nokia’s browser isn’t as well done. That’s a suitable knock. The only if you want to compare the both.
From one analyst to another, its better when our opinons are balanced on fact, not just mere perception.
Oh this is sweeter than I expected… I’ll be getting my hands on this soon!
PS: You completely missed the plethora of features making this device better than the iPhone:
- Will be readily available unlocked
- Will be affordable even when unsubsidized
- 3.2 megapixel Zeiss camera with auto-focus, macro and dual-LED flash
- 640×480 video recording at 30 fps
- MMS functionality
- Full Bluetooth support with DUN (tethering), ObEx (syncing, file transfer/browsing), A2DP stereo audio)
- Standard micro-USB 2.0 full-speed port
- Micro-SDHC support up to 16 GB
- USB mass-storage support
- FM radio
Furthermore this phone is optimized for one-handed operation, and is shaped accordingly.
What’s disappointing to me, however, is the resistive touch screen and lack of multitouch.
I fully agree…this phone is 10 times much better than the iphone… at least Nokia 5800 has brains…
I have tried it and it is really amazing…
I believe Nokia also said that they chose a resistive touchscreen deliberately because it is so important in the Asian market where people need to be able to write on a touchscreen.
This phone’s been getting lots of publicity in the media here in the UK today and I’d expect it will sell very well. Sure, the music is locked down but the phone’s cheap and unlimited music that doesn’t seem to cost anything will seem like a great deal to lots of people.